Ralathon

Won't they have very high G forces during the return? The first mercury missions also did suborbital hops and they hit 12G's on reentry. I can't imagine that'll be comfortable for the passengers.

It's concerning that they spend about 1 alinea talking about "Hey, this needs some more work" and nearly 3 chapters on "This is what we can use it for". Just wait for peer reviewed papers, reproduction of the effect by others and other such essential steps. I'd bet this month's paycheck that it's instrument error.

Pluto looks almost potato shaped at times.

Thanks!

On the subject of staging logic. Is there a way to detect how much fuel a stage has that is not the current stage? It's easy to figure out how much fuel and thrust the current stage has, but I can't find an easy way to do so for the second/Xth stage. I'm trying to program a universal launch script that will calculate a close to optimal trajectory via linear tangent thrust attitude control. The idea is that the program calculates the trajectory before the launch instead of using some pre programmed trajectory. This way I don't have to rewrite the software every time I build a new launcher (And lose multiple boosters during the testing). But to calculate this I need to know the burn duration and thrust on a stage by stage basis. I could just give all the engines and fuel tanks a tag based on their stage. But I'm wondering if there's a more elegant method.

Looks amazing! Looking forward to it.

It's a part pack. It likely won't need updating.

I think the problem is the scale of the planet. IRL mountains are 10's of kilometers away before they begin to haze over. The mountain range west of the KSC is only about 7km away though, so to get the same effect you need to increase the atmospheric haze. But the vertical height of the atmosphere in KSP and IRL are roughly equal. So from orbit the atmosphere seems way thicker than expected. You could fix it by scaling the haze with height or something.

All this talk about "realism", "cheating" and "overpowered" are missing the main point. KSP is a game. The main question here is whether or not ISRU results in more varied and interesting gameplay. Is the ISRU equipment so light that it becomes mandatory for every mission? As in, do you always end up with increased payload per funds if you include the ISRU? Clearly this is not the case since the ISRU gear is pretty heavy. To justify having it you need a huge lander that has more than 1 destination (No point bringing ISRU gear if you just want a unmanned rover on the mun). So the ISRU will not always be the obvious inclusion. Will it be so heavy and big as to be useless? No, because it is still very useful for far away targets with multiple destinations. Like messing around in the Joolian system or Duna returns. So the ISRU will add complexity to your mission planning. It is no longer "Right, I need X dV so lets slap some more boosters on this thing!", instead it becomes a question whether the mass of the ISRU justifies its inclusion. This is a good thing.

Incase anyone else is annoyed at the obvious pixels on the lunar surface, I did a quick config change to make the terrain a bit more dynamic and hide the seams. All you need to do is go to realsolarsystem.cfg, find the PQS for the moon and change the values to this: PQSMod_VertexSimplexHeight // doubles { deformity = 300 // 400 persistence = 0.7 //0.5 frequency = 60 // 12 //octaves = 10 // 8 // A DOUBLE } PQSMod_VertexHeightNoiseVertHeight // floats { deformity = 150 // 400 frequency = 30 // 12 //octaves = 7 // 6 // INT } Hope this helps some people.

Can't you use the height map as alpha channel for the effect? That way you end up with high transparency in high areas (mountains) and low in the plains and oceans.

FOOF is even worse.

Why are you so angry LethalDose? It seems the only problem you have is "The devs did not outright state that they changed their minds, even if their actions show that they did". Why is this such a big deal? Then someone else shows up and tells you this, and you completely blow him off. If you are just looking to argue with someone surely there's a better place to do so.

Raw control means directly controlling the various steering apparatus. Normally when you set kOS to point towards a direction the program controls all your RCS and gimbal to make sure you point your nose in that direction. But using raw commands you can tell your spacecraft to rotate in a certain direction with a certain strength. If you write your own PID controller this means you can build your own steering system that bypasses the kOS system.

Cold traps aren't a unique feature to Mercury. The moon has them as well. All you need for a cold trap is a crater at the poles of the body. Most atmosphere poor bodies should have these.

I always thought that was because of condensation around the sharp edge at the bottom of S1. Obstructs view of the engine bells. Just a pet theory though, don't quote me on it.

Yea I know right? All this maintenance that's being done on aircraft is way more expensive than just buying a new A-380 after every flight /s They'll do all these expensive checks for the first few landed stages of course. But I reckon that after a while they'll bring it down to some routine checks with a intensive check every dozen or so flights. You don't do a complete check of every weld on an airliner either.

I get the feeling you don't understand much about nuclear thermal rocketry. Also, what does this have to do with falcon 9 reusability?

True, but those torches usually run on something like propane/butane which burns pretty clean. In addition the flame is blue, so the combustion isn't leaving much soot. You can see how fast the material is charring in the first video around 1:00. It chars within seconds, way faster than you'd expect if it was just soot buildup from incomplete combustion.

It is clearly ablating. Look at the video with the egg getting torched. It's charred black. And withstanding 10k degrees isn't that impressive. What matters is the energy input. My hand could withstand 1 billion degrees if it was applied for a very short duration. So that laser test says nothing, it is clearly a pulse laser so the amount of energy dumped into the plastic is miniscule. It probably barely has the energy to evaporate the top layer of the plastic.

What's so miraculous about this material? It seems it's just ablating away at a low temperature and the ablated material carries the heat from the torch/laser. A piece of cork does the exact same...

They need to cover the surface of the barge with superglue, that way the stage can't tip.

Can't wait to see a video of that stage toppling.

Nah, I misread the dates in my sleep deprived state. One is in june and the other in july. Fixed it in my post.

The launch from 24 april is a GTO launch, that's heavy on the fuel use. I doubt they'll have any fuel left to try a landing. Next time they'll try a landing will likely be the 22nd of june. That's CRS-7 Another interesting date is 22 july. They're planning a land landing there.